The Go-cart (a Minnesota poem, 1959)

The Go-cart
((1959) (a Minnesota Poem))

Here in front of Old Rice School
(underneath arc lights)
the boys (the Cayuga Street Gang)
wait like candles on an alter— half lit.
We are bending over looking down
while Mike and his go-cart ready
the world for light.

None of us noticed it then, the
boy, girls…boozed, that twilight had sit:
how funny, it was like a festival—
a square rigged cart of steel, with
a motor on its back, made us hold our
breath, hoping our turn would come
next, to ride and drive this mad-mouse.

And then your turn came—counting
stopped, breathing regained—
I mean, you were different now, you
had the reins. I didn’t care all that
much to drive and ride, that mad-mouse
around and around, the school—but more
so to be present, and feel the world in light.



No: 2387 (5-23-2008) Note: back in 1959, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Mike E. Siluk (my brother), had a go-cart, he was the talk of the neighborhood for that season, and perhaps well deserved. He had everyone in envy, but he worked hard to acquire the only co-cart (with his paper route money), this side of the Mississippi I bet. And Old Rice School, which was just up an old dirt alley from our home, was a great place to have a go-around runway for the go-cart. It seems nowadays, go-carts are almost everywhere not anything special, perhaps times have changed, but ‘the world in light’ or setting the world for us in a spark of light, hasn’t change at least in memory and in this poem I tried to recapture that moment—or perhaps better put, to recapture back that extraordinary feeling. Yes indeed, those were special days. Dedicated to Mike Siluk.